Friday, October 30, 2009

Overheard at the boys school Halloween carnival today: "Could you hold my eyeball?"

I volunteered to help at the school today. As a result, I kept my eye on three little guys as they played games and acquired candy (lots of it, as though trick-or-treating tomorrow night won't be enough). The boys seemed to have fun and the school had the whole event well-organized.

This week has gone by in a bit of a blur. Monday, I interviewed the last housekeeping candidate. Tuesday, I made my decision and hopefully by the end of this upcoming Tuesday, my house will be clean and sparkling.

Tuesday, Drama Teen and I went to the dentist. I'd like to say fun was had by all, but honestly, there were a lot of cavities between us. Needless to say, I've become the toothbrush Nazi this week.

Wednesday, Kinderboy #2 went to the dentist. Cavities again abounded. Plus, the poor guy had two adult teeth pushing in behind his baby teeth. The dentist "wiggled" them out (Ouch). As a result, Kinderboy #2 got to miss an entire day of school so that the "sleeping juice" applied to his teeth and jaw wore off. He now thinks that going to the dentist wasn't so bad after all. In addition, he earned a visit from the tooth fairy. All is well in his world.

Kinderboy#1 had a better week. Of course, he was working toward two goals. The first was to participate in the carnival. The second was to get ice cream from the truck on Friday. He's still having some academic difficulties, so the school psychologist ran a few "tests". We haven't gotten the final results back, but from the preliminary stuff, it looks like he has a fairly significant cognitive learning disability. In a way, it explains why he can spell his name one day and not the next. Of course, I still think there is a liberal dose of contrariness in his system that aids and abets in his "forgetfulness"...but if pulling him out for some special instruction during the week helps, I'm all for it.

Mr. Scott traveled to Las Vegas for a couple of days at the end of the week. I'm sure it was a welcome break for him. Lots of work for me...but that and this entire week has validated my decision to hand in my editing towel. I'm finishing the last couple of books assigned to me and hope to have everything done, done, done by 1 December. Hopefully then I'll be able to really buckle down and WRITE. I miss my zombies. Of course, with tomorrow being Halloween, I'm sure I'll have more than a few of them knocking on my door.

We watched The Midnight Meat Train tonight, to help "get us in the mood" for the year's scariest day. Interesting premise and twist... When we got to the extras and Mahogany (played by Vinnie Jones) was narrating, I was exceptionally glad that he only had one line in the movie. His voice is like dark chocolate, rich and sinful... Although I thought the movie was all about the gore...he created an incredibly deep character just with his presence. Brava.

Tomorrow night, after all the ghouls and ghosties have retired for the evening, we'll be queuing up The Unborn.

Friday, October 23, 2009

It's been an odd week. Monday was just busy, then, all hell broke loose on Tuesday. I started off for my walk and realized my IPOD was dead. Since the day was cold and blustery, I opted out of my walk. Good thing. I got back to the house to a phone message. Mr. Scott had wrecked the van! Thank goodness he wasn't hurt, but my poor, poor van was in bad shape. We spent the rest of the morning coordinating insurance, towing, and car rental.

Wednesday the kids were home all day from school...need I say more.

I headed off to my critique group that evening with 12 pages of a new prologue to my zombie historical grasped in my hot nervous hands. I'd thought the previous prologue that I'd passed out last month was lame. Imagine my surprise when my six critique partners thought it was THE BEST writing I'd ever done. I handed out the new prologue...but came home and immediately stuck the old one back into the file (note to self, never delete sections...cut and paste them to an odd document you can discard only after the darn thing is published). Then, they have convinced me that third person POV is better than first...not such an easy fix.

Thursday, I interviewed cleaning services. I'm sooooo excited. Sometime in the next week, I will have my house spik and span AND have someone coming out at least once a month to keep the writing cave in order.

There's been very little drama out of the kids this week. Drama Teen has been singularly drama-less, Kinderboy #1 has had some breakdowns, but nothing out of the ordinary. Kinderboy#2 is getting his pictures retaken today (although I don't hold out much hope that the second set will be much better than the first. Sigh)

We have an early morning soccer game tomorrow. Thankfully, I'm not snack mom this week.

Now, I have to get back to changing the first three chapters from first person POV to third...so that I can get back to writing forward next week (between dental appointments, but I'm sure that will be another story for next Friday.)

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Monday started off with one sick Drama t=Teen (not sure she was really sick, although she looked and acted as if she didn't feel well) and then kinderboy #2 asked to come home from school. He, however, didn't look or act sick. I brought him home, warning him that there would be no television, no video games, no computer. He would wear pjs and go back to bed...as that's what sick people did. After a few hours of chasing him back to bed, offering him "sips" of water, because that's all that sick people could stand to drink, he'd had ENOUGH. Crying and moaning because his tummy was rumbling, he finally admitted that he'd only pretended to be sick as kinderboy#1 insisted that it was fun to stay home sick and kinderboy#2 had to try it out for himself. A deal was struck...kinderboy#2 could put his clothes back on, eat lunch, and head back to school for the last 1.5 hours. He did, and swore he'll never pretend to be sick again. Well, we'll see...

The rest of the week passed fairly uneventfully. Wednesday was a teacher-conference day so there was no school (we have another one this week, what the heck is that about????). We went to see G-Force, which was actually quite entertaining.

Thursday, Drama Teen had a close encounter with a fetal pig in Physical Science. It was already dissected, they just had to identify, draw, and learn the parts. The smell of formaldehyde (or whatever they preserve in these days) got to her, but to her credit, she stuck out the rest of the day. However, she's now a semi-confirmed vegetarian. While shopping at the store, I picked up veggie bacon and texturized vegetable ground "meat". Honestly, the bacon really isn't bad. Expensive but tasty. We'll be using the meat for spaghetti later this week. I did note that "vegetarian" didn't deter her from picking out scallops to eat for dinner tonight. Although I'll agree that seafood looks nothing like pig.

Kinderboy #1 had a decent week until Saturday at the Edwards AFB air show. If you were there and saw a family pretty much dragging a kicking and screaming child out through the gates, that was us. He's six, but like a two-year-old, no was his favorite word yesterday and nothing, nothing, nothing would do. He didn't want to go to the air show, didn't want what anyone else had for snack, and most of all, didn't want the same souvenir as everyone else got. Well, sorry. We had six kids with our group. They all got the same thing. Period. Either that or we knew it would be fights and fits all the way home. I bought him a souvenir, but he didn't want it and tried to throw it away. I fished it out while he wasn't looking and tucked it in my purse. Then, when all the planes had flown over and it was time to pack up and leave, he didn't want to go. Sigh. As soon as we got home, another fit ensued because everyone was playing with their toy airplanes and he didn't have one. When I pulled out his...he didn't even say thanks. Grrr. Contrary little cuss.

All in all, it was a pretty good week and I'm looking forward to next (with the exception of that silly conference day on Wednesday...sigh). Hope you all have a good one, too!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I'm absolutely thrilled to find out that I'm one of the winners of The Long and Short of It review site video showcase. But that only meant that I needed to get my butt in gear and create a video for Crisscross. I'm really, really pleased with the way this one turned out.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know. Set a goal, break a goal. But, to be honest, this week has been rather calm and uneventful. Amazingly so. Everyone went to school, came home, did their homework, and I didn't have to referee too many squabbles.

So, what's up with that?

As for me...I'm exhausted. The school district, in their questionable wisdom, gave the kids 1/2 day off on Wednesday. Not sure why. Teacher angst, perhaps? Then, they gave the kids two full Wednesdays off in the following week, on the 14th and the 21st. So, we'll have two Mondays for every week (and two Fridays, but still...). I'll survive. One of the days will most certainly be a movie day. We'll pick something at the $1.50 theater and spend a few blissful hours staring at some ludicrous cartoon. Good thing they serve popcorn at the theaters.

Speaking of eating, I've realized that I have a problem with food. Actually, the problem is lack of sleep. I'm up at 5:30 most mornings and on the go until 11 pm at night, most nights. At nine o'clock in the morning, I want to crawl back into bed. But I can't...I need to write, do laundry, pick up the house, etc. So, I eat to stay awake. Right after lunch, I'm again, deathly tired, but if I lay down then, I risk not waking up in time to pick the boys up from the bus. And if I set an alarm, I simply wake up every five to ten minutes anticipating that it's about to go off. So, I find myself snacking on bits of stuff...cashews, granola bars, cookies.

Here I know people will chime in that if we didn't buy it, I wouldn't eat it. True. But that's when I find I can get very inventive. did you know that mixing brown sugar and butter together tastes great (you can even mix in cinnamon...it's like a roll without the bread. Or, butter a piece of bread and sprinkle sugar on it...tastes wonderful.)

Once the boys have been picked up, sleep is out of the question. Their incessant squabbling and neediness ensure that I have a raging headache (from being so darned tired) and am irritable and, yes, I'll say it, BITCHY all afternoon. So, by now, I'm once again scrounging in the cupboards looking for a sugary pick me up to get me through the afternoon until dinner.

After dinner, my husband usually takes the boys and I collapse in a chair. I can't sleep...they all make too much noise for that, besides, if I got to sleep now, I won't sleep tonight.

By 11, I fall into bed nearly crying with exhaustion. Only to close my eyes briefly before the alarm goes off, harkening in another day of exhaustion and eating.

On the weekends, I always have hopes of breaking the cycle. However, hubby snuck off to the bedroom for a 3-hour nap, leaving me, yet again, exhausted and eating...

Friday, October 2, 2009

For those of you who didn't know, my first full-length novel, Crisscross, released yesterday. I'm blogging about it over at The Romance Studio Blog. You can purchase your copy for the sale price of 5.50 at the Write Words, Inc. Website. It's also available at OmniLit, The bookstore on the corner of your digital neighborhood, and should be available at Fictionwise in the next few weeks. I'll post the link when I get notification that it's available.

This week has been a breath of fresh, cooler, air here in the high desert of California. Now that the mornings are cold, it sure is tough to get out of bed unless you are under the age of 6. Kinderboy#1, at the ripe "old" age of six is just beginning to discover the joys of sleeping in. Not so much Kinderboy#2, as he is up with the sun most mornings.

Our trips to the doctor continue, this time with Kinderboy#2's cough. Diagnosis, sinus infection. Treatment, amoxicillin. Yummy, exclaims the ailing youngster. Now, I know there's a fine line between making medicine taste good so that children don't run and hide, but that powdery pink stuff tastes a bit too good in my opinion. But if it helps his cough, I'm all for it. I just need to remember to put it at the back of the top shelf of the fridge as I don't want to tempt fate or little boys...

This weekend, I'll be taking the kids to the movies so that Mr. Scott can get some work done on the programming contest. When I mentioned Zombieland, my husband gave me an odd look, so I guess we're stuck going to see either the Toy Story in 3D double-feature or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I'm also trying my hand at smuggling in candy instead of buying the expensive stuff at the snack counter. I feel sorta guilty about it, except that we're going to the "expensive" theater and I'm still going to buy popcorn (lots of it).

So hope you have a fantastic Friday and a great weekend. Think about me on Saturday, I'll be the one sitting in the dark feeling guilty and wishing I was a couple of theaters down the hall watching dead people rise and walk...hey, it IS research, you know! (...wonders if the IRS would let me write off movie tickets as a business expense...)